South Dakota · Governor
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · fundamentals only, no polls
Who is running?
Dan Ahlers (Democratic), Larry Rhoden (Republican).
The race, in brief
South Dakota elects its governor on November 3, 2026. Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election in the state since 1974. The state profile records a median household income of 72421.0, a white non-Hispanic share of 0.8 and a college share of 0.311.
Republican Larry Rhoden became governor in 2025 when Kristi Noem resigned to become secretary of homeland security, having served as her lieutenant governor since 2019; he is running for his first full term with Lieutenant Governor Tony Venhuizen. In the June 2 primary no candidate passed 35%: Toby Doeden led with 30.6%, Rhoden had 25.2%, U.S. representative Dusty Johnson 23.4% and House Speaker Jon Hansen 20.8%. Rhoden won the July 28 runoff over Doeden with 70.8%, in the state's first runoff since a 1985 law created them. The Democratic nominee is Dan Ahlers, the state party's executive director, a former state senator and the 2020 U.S. Senate nominee, with Steven McCleerey as running mate.
Every rater listed calls the race R: the Cook Political Report, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, Inside Elections, RealClearPolitics, Sabato's Crystal Ball and Silver Bulletin; the Cook, Inside Elections and Sabato calls date from 2025. The text lists no general-election polls.
The facts carry no model forecast for this race, so there is no model figure to report.
The facts, each beside its sentence
Incumbent Republican Larry Rhoden, who ascended to the office of governor in 2025 after Kristi Noem resigned to become secretary of homeland security, is running for his first full term in office.
is running for his first full term in office.
Running mate: Steven McCleerey, former state representative from the 1st district (2015–2021)
Running mate: Tony Venhuizen, incumbent lieutenant governor (2025–present)
Dan Ahlers, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, former state senator (2008–2010), and nominee for U.S. Senate in 2020
Rhoden had previously been serving as lieutenant governor under Noem since the two took office in 2019.
Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election in South Dakota since 1974.
This was the first runoff ever held in the state since the adoption of a 1985 law that established runoffs for gubernatorial and Congressional primaries.
The Cook Political Report R September 11, 2025 Decision Desk HQ R September 23, 2026
candidate: Larry Rhoden (incumbent) votes: 83,582
Emerson College July 12–13 2026 500 (LV) ± 4.3% 32% |62% 7%
Dusty Johnson, U.S. representative from AL (2019–present)
Not in the source: facts.forecast is empty: the model has no nowcast or election-day row for this race.; facts.candidates marks Rhoden as incumbent: false, but the text says he is the incumbent governor.; The text lists no general-election polls and no fundraising figures.; The text gives no presidential results for the state and no vote shares from earlier gubernatorial elections.; No rating is finer than 'R'; endorsement sections are empty in the text.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as fc668860b133; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+31.9 | R+26.9 | R+29.9 |
A shift of 2.1 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 31.1% | 34.0% | -2.9 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 80.3% | 66.3% | +14.0 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 2.2% | 10.1% | -7.9 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 4.6% | 12.9% | -8.3 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 1.4% | 4.4% | -3.0 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 3.9% | 9.6% | -5.7 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 37.7 | 39.1 | -1.38 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $72,421 | $77,633 | $-5,212 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $236,800 | $314,132 | $-77,332 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 68.6% | 67.4% | +1.3 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 3.0% | 4.8% | -1.8 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 3.2% | 3.0% | +0.2 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 9.3% | 12.3% | -3.0 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 8.1% | 11.1% | -3.0 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 31.1% | 32.1% | -1.0 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 2.1% | 2.6% | -0.5 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 3.2% | 2.9% | +0.4 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.45 | 0.47 | -0.02 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 2.0% | 4.0% | -2.0 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | +0.1 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.2 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | +0.2 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.3 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $75,699 | $70,662 | $+5,037 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 39.1% | 32.4% | +6.8 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 17.0% | 19.4% | -2.4 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.5% | 6.1% | -0.6 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 3.8% | 4.4% | -0.6 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 2.1% | 3.8% | -1.7 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.6% | -0.3 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.9% | 0.9% | +0.0 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.7% | 1.5% | +0.2 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.2% | 1.2% | +0.1 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Has anyone polled it?
We hold no published poll of this general election. A search of aggregators, pollster releases, university polls and local news on 2 October found none (primary polls exist for some races and are not this contest). That is what we could find, not proof that no poll has been conducted. When one is published it enters the poll model and this page gains a nowcast.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Margins and probabilities are for Dan Ahlers. With no polls, this is the fundamentals forecast alone: the state's own past results for this office and for president, its demographics, economy, religion and government employment, the candidates' incumbency, experience and money, and the national environment for this midterm.
How wide is the range?
In 8 of 10 simulations the margin falls between -45 and -11 points. The spread is the fundamentals model's own measured error (sd 13.4 points), not a guess: a forecast without polls is uncertain and is shown that way.
How accurate is a fundamentals-only forecast?
Tested on past races without letting it see them: across 175 Senate and governor races in 2016-2022 it missed the final margin by 8.3 points on average, and by 6.7 points across 35 races in 2024. Our poll-based forecast missed by 5.4 on the same races. Most races it is used for here are lopsided enough that an 8-point miss would not change the winner.
Where did every number come from?
Run 6af527b9, single_race_latent/0.8.1, as of 2026-10-01 23:02 UTC, basis: ground-up prior only, no polls.